Poison
by The Pianist's Touch
Summary: Elsa has a phobia of gloves. A/N: May become a serious of semi-connected one shots. Also might be crap, since I haven't written in a while, but give it a shot.


It has been two weeks since the Great Thaw, and everything has changed.

In the years before the events of her coronation, Elsa hid in her room in self-imposed isolation, terrified of her powers, terrified of the world, and terrified of herself. Many people, Anna included, seemed to look at her with sympathy on the rare occasion that the queen's thirteen years of isolation and separation from her sister came up. They assumed that Elsa had, like a third parent, been raised by loneliness. They pitied her for it. But what Elsa remembers most from those dark days is not the loneliness-although that certainly featured in her thoughts- but the fear, that soul-freezing, mind-numbing, hysterical fear that had slithered up to her when she was an eight year old, snowman-building girl, and poisoned her life with its bite.

But it has been two weeks since the Great Thaw, and everything has changed.

These days, instead of holding onto the mantra of "conceal, don't feel", Elsa has learned to let her sister in, and instead of being shy and fearful, she is firm and fierce, willing to engage in lively debates with the members of her council, and willing to stand up for herself when she feels she has been slighted. These days, instead of hiding her magic, Elsa delights in using her magic for everything as big as building a castle made of ice, to anything as small as creating snowflakes and flurries for the children of Arendelle. The children are awestruck by her magic, and she is awestruck by the fact that they can accept it.

These days, Elsa isn't afraid of anything.

Or so she tells herself.

Elsa is not afraid of crowds, she is not afraid of her powers, and she is not afraid of herself...

But she is afraid of the gloves.

While Elsa forgets most of the dreams she has, she will never forget the first time she dreamed about the gloves.

_ "The gloves will help," The King said, as he tugged the silky white material over Elsa's trembling hands. They sat in her father's study, and Elsa sat in the armchair by a roaring fireplace while a blizzard raged outside. For some reason, her father was wearing his military uniform, and his crown seemed to be too large for his head, so it tilted over his eye and created a sinister shadow against his face._

_ "But Papa," Elsa asked, "How can the gloves help? They're just thin cloth. The ice will seep through the gloves!" she said, her voice rising in fear. _

_ "I know," the King said, looking down at her wide, frightened blue eyes with a blank, carefully controlled expression. "The gloves were never meant to keep the ice in."_

_ Elsa was confused. "But Papa!" She cried. "The gloves are small and tight! Why do I have to wear them if they don't do anything and they don't fit right?" Elsa began to yank at the glove in the right hand with her left. They didn't come off immediately. Instead, the more she tugged, the smaller and tighter they got. _

_ "Papa!" Elsa yelled, her voice rising in fear. " The gloves won't come off!" Her eyes were wide and panicked, and her normally perfectly braided blond hair had begun to come loose from its braid, and was beginning to take on the wild look typically favored by her sister._

_ "They were never meant to come off..." The King whispered quietly, and Elsa looked at him in confusion._

_ "But you can't feel anything, can you?" He asked suddenly, and she realized that the shrinking, tightening gloves weren't painful-but that didn't make them any less frightening._

_ "No, but Papa-!"_

_ "Well, then if you can't feel anything, then they can't cause you any pain, can they? Just take the gloves off!" He said, and Elsa renewed her efforts to take off the gloves. To her horror, they kept shrinking, and they began to cut off circulation to her hands as the fabric of the glove squeezed itself against the flesh of her palms and wrist. Suddenly, a thought popped into Elsa's head: if she didn't get the gloves off _right now_, then they would cut off her hands!_

_ "Papa, I can't take off the gloves, they won't come off! Papa help me!" she cried hysterically. Although Elsa could feel no pain from the gloves, she began to weep in terror and frustration. The snow that had been falling outside began to beat against the window in increasing fervor. _

_ "You can't feel anything Elsa! You are empty inside! If you were a better daughter, you would be able to take those gloves off, and you would be worthy of being Anna's sister-you would be worthy of being my heir. If you can't take those gloves off, then I'll take them off for you!"_

_The King reached over and began to frantically pull off the gloves. Elsa screamed in terror as she felt the gloves squeeze her hands until they felt like the bones would pop._

_ "Conceal, don't feel" He yelled at her as he tugged._

_ "Conceal, don't feel!" The window broke with a loud snap, and the blizzard that had been previously kept at bay came raging into the study, turning the formerly warm room into a frigid maelstrom of ice and snow._

_ "CONCEAL, DON'T FEEL!"_

_ Suddenly, there was a faint popping sound, and the gloves, which had been getting smaller and smaller with each successive tug, poofed out of existence-taking her hands with it. Elsa looked at the mangled, bloody stumps where her hands had been, and wished she could feel something. _

_ The King looked at her sadly, and Elsa remembered how he had said that the gloves were never meant to come off. _

_ "This was the plan all along, wasn't it?"_

And that was how, at eight years old, Elsa became terrified of gloves.

Her parents never understood. Her father, her real-life, well-meaning but perhaps slightly misguided, non-hand-chopping-off father especially didn't understand, as he had been the one to ask Elsa to start wearing the gloves in the first place, and she had never had a problem doing as he said before.

"But Elsa," he had said with a frown, the day after Elsa's nightmare when she had steadfastly refused to put on the gloves. "You _must_ control your abilities! We _must_ find a way to contain them! You don't want another accident to happen, do you? You love your sister, don't you?" He asked, kneeling down to grip Elsa by the shoulders and look her in the eye as he said this.

"But Papa...the gloves..." she started in a small, trembling voice. "They're small and they're tight."

She looked down at her gloved hands, but all she could see in her mind's eye were two bloody, mangled stumps. But her father could never understand her fear.

"These gloves are the only things that have worked! Elsa, I know you don't like wearing them, but if the gloves are the key to suppressing these abilities-to keeping Anna safe-then you _will_ wear them, whether you want to or not! From this point on, the gloves are _not_ going to come off!"

And from that point on, until her 21st birthday, she took them off only to wash her hands, wearing them even to sleep for fear that the terror of her dreams would create a snowstorm in her room. Logically, while she might have known they wouldn't cut off her hands, she still felt like they suffocating and constricting until they would finally cut off a part of her-her magic. When she finally took them off, on the North Mountain, she felt free, and liberated, as if she had torn off a great mental shackle. But it was only later that she realized that her greatest fear had somehow become a security blanket to her-she never felt comfortable with the gloves on, but she never felt completely safe when they were off.

Despite what she told Anna after the coronation-despite what she told everyone-she didn't suddenly have complete control over her powers after she learned that love thaws. Yes, it is much better than before, and since her coronation, Elsa has slowly let herself be drawn out of the fear and terror that characterized her childhood, but relapses are unavoidable, and some things never change. She'll be in a particularly spirited debate with an adviser, and notice ice creeping in on the floor and on the walls, or she'll be hurt by the angry words of a villager who would rather not be ruled by a Snow Queen, and a gust of wind will come through and throw the offending person to the ground. In these moments, Elsa will realize that she still can't completely control her powers. In these moments, Elsa will murmur in an apology, head bowed, cheek blushing, to whomever she has just nearly harmed with her ice powers, and will stumble away until she finds her room. Elsa is having one of those moments now. Her heart is racing, her breath is coming in short, and she nearly feels as though she will faint, the terror overwhelms her so much. The very thought that she could harm someone-that she could be the monster she has always been terrified of becoming-is real and heavy in her mind. The only thing she can think of while she searches is _I thought it was supposed to be better now. I thought everything was supposed to be different._

Suddenly, she sees them, and limbs trembling, simply looks at them for a while.

Does she dare to put them on? She looks at them, and instead of gloves, she imagines

that the gloves are really two buckets of wet cement, waiting to dry around her hands, to weigh her down and drag her beneath the waves of her fear until she suffocates and drowns. Glancing at the walls, she sees thin tendrils of ice begin to creep in, and suddenly, it has started to snow in her bedroom.

Suddenly, the scene seems to familiar, and the absurdity of the situation-shaking and trembling over a pair of gloves-overwhelms her, and Elsa begins to laugh.

She doesn't need the gloves anymore.

Fear is her poison, but she has an antidote now.

Who need gloves when she has Anna?

Quietly, she stands up, and with one last look at the gloves, she leaves the room as the door quietly swings shut behind her.

It has been two weeks since the Great Thaw, and everything has changed.


End file.
